


I Drift Into You

by DoctorSyntax



Category: Castle, Rizzoli & Isles, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, F/F, POV Second Person, cop on cop action, timelines are my bitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorSyntax/pseuds/DoctorSyntax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meeting the Winchesters sets you adrift. Meeting a friend of theirs brings you home</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Drift Into You

**Author's Note:**

> No prior knowledge of Castle or Rizzoli & Isles is necessary to understand this, but for those who do know it: set pre-series for R&I and mid-s1 for Castle. Title from “Drift” by Vermillion Lies.

In the months after you meet Sam and Dean Winchester, you find yourself in limbo. There's nothing left for you in this town now that you know what happened to your brother. Work keeps you busy, and you’re thankful for that, but you don’t know what to with yourself in stolen moments of downtime: you don’t know who you are anymore without your brother to think of. You can’t remember who you were three years ago, much less how to become that person again, and you’re not sure you’d want to even if you could.

In the end, you decide that what you really need is a change of scenery. New York sounds far enough away.

*

You end up a deputy in the state police department. During a trip into the city to sort out a jurisdictional dispute, you cross paths with a detective, smart and tough with short reddish-brown hair you want to run through your fingers the minute you see it.

The case looks to be particularly unusual, and the detective you meet with is ready to fight you tooth and nail for it. You don't mind; it reminds you too much of the Winchesters and of Riley, and you can’t, not yet. She ends up with jurisdiction but you end up with her phone number, and you both walk away thinking you're the winner.

Her name is Kate, Katherine, and it’s close enough to Kathleen that it’s weird for you, at the end of the night, when you’re sprawled across her clean-starched bedsheets and her name escapes your lips half-breathless and pleading. You can tell it’s a little awkward for her too, but you both push it aside in favor of chasing sensation. 

You go on exactly one date, but you keep seeing each other for months afterward.

She wears a watch around her wrist and a ring on a necklace. You pretend not to noice they’re always the last things she takes off. Oh, it could just be personal idosyncracy, but you don’t believe that for a second. No, she's hurting bad—you recognize the signs. Proud and private, she won't tell you any details, and you're not about to ask. Nothing good ever comes of prying. (You wish to god more people realized that. You had to learn the hard way.) You wish you could tell her _knowing what happened won’t make it hurt less_ , but you doubt she’d believe you.

Anyway, she belongs to someone else, deep down. You're both just passing the time. Better not to get too involved.

The relationship dies a natural death. She begins dating again—not you, someone else, but still not the _right_ someone else. You think about her from time to time, when you look in the mirror the morning after a haircut and run your fingers through short, dark hair. You wonder if she and her writer-shadow ever made it. You hope they did.

One day she'll meet the Winchesters too. But you'll be long out of her life by then, and you never mentioned their names: she’ll never make the connection and you won’t be around to do it for her.

Your mother calls you every few months, reminds you not to be a stranger, asks unsubtle questions about your love life. "When are you going to get married?" she asks, and you never know what to say. You don't think you'll ever get married. Some girls just aren't the marrying kind. (Your brother knew. Your parents still don't.) 

Massachusetts beckons, and it comes with a promotion to Sheriff, and you’re gone without a single glance back.

*

You pick her up in a bar—she’s complaining about how the people she dates either hate that she’s a cop or find it kinky, and you can’t help but note, and be intrigued by, her use of gender-neutral pronouns. You flash your badge and say, _Does this do anything for you?_ and something about her slow, speculative smile thrills you to the bone.

She buys you a drink and you meet her best friend, a runway-perfect medical examiner who insults you three times without realizing it, and you understand by the end of the night that whatever kind of relationship this night begins, it’s not going anywhere significant as long as Maura’s around. And you like that. You revel in the safety this provides.

She has scars on the palms of her hands you never ask about. She never offers the story but every so often she wakes up in the middle of the night thrashing and sweating, little cries of no falling from her lips like a plea. PTSD or just plain nightmares, you don’t know, but you make an educated guess, roll over and press your body against her back, drape an arm over her and listen, half-asleep, as her breathing slows and her body relaxes against yours. She never mentions it in the morning and neither do you.

Jane steadfastly refuses to allow her mother to meet you, and you frown, until you remember what your own mother is like. You understand.

The two of you pass a pleasant, uncomplicated eight months together before you get restless, tired of Massachusetts and especially its drivers. If you’re honest with yourself, it’s starting to hurt that you’ll never be first in her life, but you’re nothing if not stubborn and refuse to feel the loss for what it is.

*

You still don’t want to return to Minnesota, but the South Dakota state police are hiring. The next state over is the closest you’ve ever been to home since you left, almost a year and a half ago, and some days you wonder if it’s still not far enough.

You bring an extradited prisoner down to Sioux Falls to be held on a murder charge, and that’s how you meet the town sheriff, Jody Mills. You’re an hour and a half out of town, trying not to think about how beautiful she is, when you get a call saying the prisoner’s escaped.

Something in her voice gives you the idea that she’s not telling you the whole truth about what happened, but you also sense that there’s a bigger picture in place here. You’re not usually a sucker for a pretty face, but without stopping to think about what you’re doing or why, you throw your lot in with hers, shoulder half the blame for what happened. You don’t ask her for permission or tell her what you’ve done, but you’re sure that when her career doesn’t come to a grinding halt she figures it out.

You don’t hear from her at first, and you’re not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.

It’s over a year before you cross paths again, but she remembers you with a smile and a thank-you so genuine you find yourself accepting her offer of “let me buy you a drink sometime.” One drink turns into two turns into five or six and at the end of night you’re both holding each other up and you spend a night at hers, in a house that’s too big for one person, in a bed that’s too big for one person.

It starts happening every time you’re in town. And, as it happens, you’re in town a lot more often.

Once, early on in your acquaintance, you both drink too much wine and she talks (a little wistfully) about someone named Bobby. It’s obvious it’s a recent wound—stitched up but not finished healing, raw around the edges and tender to the touch. You don’t touch because you know better, and you choke back the urge to spill your own guts. It’s too much too soon, on her part too, and something inside you realizes she’s only shown you the tip of the iceberg.

As the weeks pass you hear about others: her husband, her little boy. Little passing references, vague on details, but enough for you to piece together a rough picture, a puzzle missing a quarter of its pieces. But what fits together... well, it doesn’t look like it’s going to come out pretty.

You start to think maybe you're one of the lucky ones.

You’re halfway to running scared, don’t quite have a foot over the threshold but you’re headed in that direction. It isn’t going to take long. You’ve already started looking for an open position in some state PD on the other side of the country.

You’re thinking Maine, maybe, or Georgia.

It’s not that you don’t want to stay: you do. More than anything, you do. But you’re just as out of your depth here as you were searching for Riley; the difference is, now you know how impossible your task is. She’s just as strong as Kate and Jane, just as capable of handling this on her own, but for the first time, you don’t want to let her. You don’t know why she’s different, only that she is, that you _want_ to know her story. To ask. Hold her hand as she tells you, brush her hair out of her face, kiss her forehead and say it’ll all be alright.

But you don’t know how to help her and she isn’t going to tell you what she needs. You want to soothe away the hurt, but you can’t be like everyone you knew back home, who tried so hard, who loved you so much, but just couldn’t understand why you couldn’t get past Riley disappearing.

 _He’d want you to move on. He wouldn’t want you to give up your life like this_. Platitudes. As if anyone could possibly know what he’d want for you. But you find it on the tip of your tongue every time she tries not to talk about her family: _They’re in a better place. They’d want you to be happy._

_Do you think you could be happy with me?_

You can’t be that person for her. You can’t love her like that. So you have to let her go.

It’s the Winchesters who stop you, indirectly. You overhear her on the phone one day, talking to someone named Sam about someone else named Dean, and when she hangs up you tilt your head to the side and ask, “Sam and Dean Winchester?” even though somewhere inside of you you’re already certain of the answer. 

The look she gives you is one of someone who found what they wanted before they even realized they were looking, and it warms you to your very core. You hear all about the Winchesters and Bobby Singer; who they were, what they did. Halting at first, like she’s not sure you’re really going to believe her, then freer and freer when she realizes you do.

It’s the most open she’s ever been since you met her, and all your plans to leave get lost somewhere by the wayside the second she turns those wide eyes on you. You know. You understand. You're the only person on earth that she can tell the story of what really happened to her family.

All she needs is for someone to listen. She doesn’t need anyone to offer advice or tired, meaningless clichés. Just to listen, and to believe. You can do that. And when she says she wants to help Sam and Dean, you encourage her with a smile and a kiss. Because _this_ , right here, this is how she’s going to heal. By helping. And all you need to do is help her help them. It’s not much of a hardship: you want to help them too.

Together you keep an eye out for the weird, the improbable. Sunday mornings in bed, most couples do the crossword; the two of you split a pile of papers from all over the country and read choice headlines aloud, little snippets of articles about unusual deaths, freak accidents. She wears reading glasses. You wear one of her old t-shirts. You try to tell yourself the domesticity unsettles you, but it isn’t true at all.

But no matter what you find, or who finds it, she’s the only one who ever calls the Winchesters. You ask her not to mention your name when she does. You doubt they’d remember you, but you’d rather not confirm the theory either—you have a sneaking suspicion it’d be like a knife to the chest if you ever knew for sure.

She drunk-dials you from Canton, Ohio in the middle of the night, and you’re annoyed until you hear the way her quiet voice echoes in the stillness of the nighttime; how her voice on the phone fills your dark bedroom and makes it almost seem as if she’s there with you. She tells you about how she’s helping the Winchesters and the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue she and Sam found. About how Dean disappeared and she doesn’t know if they’ll be able to get him back. All you can remember is when Sam was missing, the way Dean searched for him, how you looked into his eyes and could tell he’d rip the entire earth apart looking, if that’s what it took to get Sam back.

You remember wondering if people saw that in your eyes when you spoke to them about Riley.

You tell her, _The Winchesters are good at saving each other._ You tell her, _Don’t worry. You’ll think of something._ You don’t tell her, _I miss you. Come home soon._

She tells you about how she finally convinced Sam to sleep and now she’s tossing and turning; about the empty, dark room and how she’s too old to be sleeping on the floor; she talks and talks about mostly nothing and ends with _but I wish you were here_ with the sort of wistful, childish honestly that only drunk people can manage before she sighs and falls asleep with the line still open.

It’s as intimate as falling asleep next to her in bed even though you’re hundreds of miles apart, and you’re only the smallest bit surprised to find that you wouldn’t mind doing that every night.

You whisper _good-night_ before hanging up the phone and you stare up at the ceiling, clutching your phone to your chest, for a long time before you sleep that night. You start thinking about what your life could be like if she was always in it. What forever could be.

You start thinking about moving again. This time, to Sioux Falls.

Turns out you’re the marrying kind after all.


End file.
